Tag Archives: music-features

I t’s early August, and Latin Mafia just stepped offstage at Lollapalooza. Even though they’re taking a break at a nearby dining hall, they’re absolutely buzzing with energy. It’s hard to turn that live-wire adrenaline off; they spent the entire set crowd-surfing over screaming fans and inciting mosh pits as …

The night Shawn James sold out an 1,100-cap room in São Paulo, he realized what many artists who venture south of the U.S. eventually learn: Latin America doesn’t just welcome you, it takes you in completely. “It was the biggest show of my career,” James says. “We sold out and …

T heir real life was about to slip into fantasy, which was pretty much the plan. At the tail end of the 1960s, Roger Taylor and Freddie Bulsara would lie on the floor together, head to head, getting lost in Electric Ladyland, talking about their future. Maybe they’d share a …

Four months after news broke that she and Jason Isbell were divorcing, Amanda Shires opened a pair of concerts for Isbell in Colorado. The singer-songwriter, who addresses the end of her marriage and the reclamation of her independence on her new album, Nobody’s Girl, says she played the gigs simply …

Country music sure likes to talk a lot about “authenticity,” but spend a day with a country musician who isn’t really country — and who quite possibly shouldn’t even be around today — and you’ll understand what that word really means. “It just sounds like a lot of stuff that …

Not long ago, Fred Armisen was reminiscing about the sound-effect LPs he used to stock at the Chicago record store where he worked in the Nineties. These vinyl platters contained all kinds of sounds, ranging from Halloween-themed shrieks and moans intended for use in haunted houses to functional recordings of …

This past weekend, cryptic posters popped up around the world reading “Your Favorite Boy Band Is Coming Back,” along with a URL: YourFavoriteBoyBand.com. It wasn’t immediately clear who the red and yellow flyers belonged to, but the site was soon updated to include a quiz to help confused visitors figure …

Eight years ago, “Drinking Problem” had dropped seemingly out of nowhere and the smooth vocal trio Midland were riding a growing wave of a country music resurgence.One night around that same time, I was on the patio of Justine’s French brasserie in Austin, Texas, talking with one of my favorite …

Drake’s upcoming ninth studio album, Iceman, is his first solo project since his now infamous (and litigious) war of words with Kendrick Lamar last spring. In a move that isn’t terribly surprising for Drake circa 2025, he’s turned the album’s rollout into a multipart livestream that looks and feels as …

The box-office numbers have arrived for the documentary In Whose Name? from filmmaker Nico Ballesteros, who was granted unvarnished access to Kanye West — now known as just Ye — in the six tumultuous years following his public embrace of conservative politics. The film opened to a limited release, screening …